The present invention relates to animal waste collection devices and methods. In particular, the invention relates to animal waste collection devices and methods that are used in combination with a bag for collecting, storing, and disposing of the animal waste.
Reports indicate that the American population is outnumbered by their pets. In fact, it has been reported that Americans are outnumbered by their pet dogs alone, which number more than 250 million by some estimates. As these numbers increase, the public demand for animal regulation increases correspondingly, responsive to the public health and safety concerns related to the high population of pet animals.
Generally, pet owners residing in municipal regions are subject to ordinances requiring that their animals be leashed at all times in public, and restrained in private to prevent uncontrolled wandering. In addition to these ordinances, most municipalities have promulgated so-called “pooper-scooper” ordinances, which require pet owners to accept personal responsibility for collection and disposition of the waste material produced by their pet animals. A typical ordinance instituted recently provides that to avoid criminal charges, you must immediately place the waste in a plastic bag, securely tied, and then place it in a solid waste container. The enforcement of some ordinance specifies fines, jail time, and probation as penalty for violation. Clearly, the social trend that started years ago in the cities has now spread to the entire country, including some rural areas.
When pet owners are subject to both leash-laws and pooper-scooper ordinances, the owner is obliged to (a) “walk” their pet on a leash and (b) retrieve and dispose of pet wastes when and where the animal decides to relieve itself. This distasteful routine is familiar to all responsible dog owners and many bystanders. Because of the distastefulness of this routine, many less responsible dog owners leave the waste where it lies. A local legislative body may respond to this problem by instituting severe sanctions for such behavior, such as the type of penalties exemplified above. Practitioners in the art respond to the problem by proposing means designed to minimize the unpleasantness of the gathering and disposal of such animal waste.
For instance, many devices have been designed in order to make the “pooper-scooper” ordinance easier and more pleasurable to obey. Early devices on the market designed to tackle this challenge were designed with relatively long-handles attached to a mechanical apparatus to “scoop” up the “poop,” thereby coining the name pooper-scooper. The early designs weren't concerned with retrieving dog wastes without soiling the owners' hands. Unfortunately, the first such pooper-scoopers were large and awkwardly configured devices that were inconvenient to carry and often soiled in use. In using this or later versions and designs of pooper-scoopers, a rigid tray or scoop is employed to scoop up the waste material as best as possible. Picking up pet waste with these devices often resulted in a soiled device both in the vicinity of the waste and the tray itself. Further, this design as well as others often requires the use of both hands, which is extremely difficult when holding a pet's leash and/or an umbrella.
Even if a disposable bag is placed within the tray, no means are provided for cleanly gathering all of the waste material into the bag. This omission usually obliges the user to employ a twig, branch, or other readily available item as a tool, hose or scraper for manipulating the waste material from the device into the bag.
Accordingly, to date pet-owners (and others) are confronted with pet waste that can be collected using only an awkward scoop or shovel or, worse, a simple plastic bag for use together with whatever other “tools” may be afforded by their immediate environment. This task is very unpleasant, in fact it is so unpleasant that, as stated above, local ordinances are often ignored and pet waste is commonly left where it lies, creating social, public-health, and legal problems for the pet owner and others. Other solutions known in the art such as, but not limited to, disposable surgical gloves, paper tissues, sandwich bags and the like do little to reduce the well-known unpleasantness of the pet sanitation task. None of these alternatives provides for simple sanitary gathering and bagging of pet waste and equipment clean up.
Bad enough the task of picking up pet waste must be done to comply with local laws; it is often equally embarrassing to carry a huge awkward device that everyone knows is used and has been used in the past to shovel pet feces into a bag. This becomes even more embarrassing when neighbors stop and talk to the pet owner as he or she stands in front of them with a huge poopy scooper that may even smell if it has been recently used and is soiled.
Accordingly, a need exists for an animal waste removal system that is easy to use, prevents the user from getting soiled, and does not require simultaneous use of both hands, since using two hands presents a problem with respect to retention of the pet leash and/or umbrella. That is, if the waste pick-up device requires two hands for use, the leash must be put down which is undesirable since the pet may run away. An alternative to putting the leash down and risking that the dog may possibly run away is to slip the leash onto a wrist, which is undesirable as retention of the leash is difficult and operation of the waste pick-up device is considerably hindered.
All in all a need currently exist for an animal waste removal system that is sanitary (in that it is not soiled in the pick-up operation), is easy to use, is easily stored, can be used with one hand, can be used for multiple pick-ups and is relatively inexpensive. The present invention is directed to an improved system which is capable of easily and sanitarily cleaning up animal waste and solves the problems raised or not solved by existing material removal systems. Of course, the present invention has a multitude of uses involving the removal and disposal of materials other than animal feces and should not be so limited.
The present invention is further described below in the figures and description thereof.